The Registered Investment Advisor (RIA) licence from the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) will enable Douugh’s wealth business to offer services through its “Wealth Jars” range, including robo-advice and trading.
Douugh reported it is on track to launch its wealth solution in the next couple of months, following the recent roll-outs of Autopilot, an automated money management feature and instant virtual card provisioning with Mastercard.
The Wealth Jars product is marketed as helping customers accelerate their savings, by investing money in custom-built managed portfolios.
The company is planning on expanding the offering into investing for retirement through a dedicated “Retirement Jar”, as well as fractionalised single stocks through a “Stocks Jar” and crypto trading through an aptly named “Crypto Jar”.
Douugh will be aiming to take a slice of market share in the mobile investment platform space, founder and chief executive Andy Taylor signalled.
“With this feature we can target customers in the investing space who are currently using platforms like Betterment, Acorns and Stash, with a holistic solution for the money management, focused on growing automated long-term wealth,” Mr Taylor said.
“This should result in larger average deposit balances being received and ultimately a higher penetration of customers paying in their salaries, which is our north star metric.”
Douugh recently acquired ethical investment platform Goodments, which has an Australian Financial Services Licence, for $1.5 million. With the purchase, the neobank has positioned itself to also launch an integrated banking and wealth platform in Australia, with plans to expand into other markets.
Goodments founder and former CEO Tom Culver became head of Douugh’s wealth management division under the acquisition.
Mr Taylor added the company is planning to develop other new features to boost the value proposition of the banking platform and to accelerate customer growth.
“Overall deposits and card spend continue to build strongly in the US and the company looks forward to providing a quarterly update on platform metrics in due course,” Mr Taylor said.
Sarah Simpkins
Sarah Simpkins is a journalist at Momentum Media, reporting primarily on banking, financial services and wealth.
Prior to joining the team in 2018, Sarah worked in trade media and produced stories for a current affairs program on community radio.
You can contact her on [email protected].
